Shadows at Dusk
by mistress amethyst une
Summary: Kathryn's disappeared again. Chakotay's keeping it together. Or is he? Losing, finding and the aftermath. Complete.
1. Shadows at Dusk

**Disclaimer: **ST: VOY isn't mine.

**Author's Note: **Angst piece. Need to sharpen my skills before taking a stab at Understated Difficulties again.

**Shadows at Dusk**

**by mistress amethyst une**

_When he awoke in the morning, the first thing he did was look at her. When he found her sleeping next to him, he felt relief. When she was not there, he felt anxious and searched the house for her. There was something slightly odd for him about not being lonely. The very fact of having ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again. The question haunted him: What would he do? _--taken from _Tony Takitani_ by Haruki Murakami

So this was what it felt like to be perfectly healthy yet hovering over the precipice of death at the same time. It was a feeling he knew well. He knew it well enough to know that he hated feeling it more than anything else. How long had it been since he'd last seen her? The last time he'd seen her before-

Maybe not thinking about it would make it not true. No, he'd tried that. He always tried that whenever something like this happened. It never worked, didn't do him any good. He couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't-

This couldn't possibly be happening, could it?

She wasn't dead. He clung to that thought as if his life depended on it. No, his life did depend on it. If he lost hope-

He couldn't. Couldn't lose hope, could hardly breathe...

There was so much he couldn't do. When he'd heard what had happened-

His mind was all over the place, unable to maintain a steady stream of thought. He had to see her, had to touch her, had to know she was still in this world, still tangible, still real.

This always happened whenever she went missing.

He worried himself half to death, all the while maintaining the most convincing facade of calm he could muster. At first glance, one would think he was immune to the effects of her absence. He took command with utmost professionalism whenever she wandered into the nothingness of space and met some calamity that left her with little hope of ever returning to the ship, to him...

The crew didn't know that he went on autopilot whenever he thought he would never see her again. He parroted commands as best suited the situation; no emotion colored his decisions. All he did was take charge as best he could while waiting for any news on their progress in searching for her. It would be of no use to anyone if he allowed her disappearance to render him inept, might even get in the way of the search, besides, what would she think if he didn't take care of the ship because he'd been busy letting thoughts of her being gone get in the way of things? That was exactly what she had wanted to avoid when they'd started their relationship. The last thing he wanted to do was prove her right about how it wouldn't work out between them because their feelings would get in the way of their duty to the ship and its crew.

He couldn't lose her. Stubbornly, he clung to hope as he continued navigating through mockingly calm space.

She had been the cure to what had eternally ailed him, the shadow he needed beside his as he walked in a world that seemed eternally stuck at dusk.

Dusk, the last traces of light before darkness engulfed everything. There was something so very sad about dusk. It was brighter than starlight but it also signaled the end of the day. At least the stars gaped at you like billions of sympathetic fireflies bound to the darkness above, unable to reach you to offer you more light but sympathetic nonetheless. Dusk offered no such comfort. One would walk alone, a shadow bound to one's feet, a shadow elongated by the stresses of the day continuously pulling at it.

But Kathryn had been the cure for that sadness. Another shadow walked beside his now, one that had been stretched by stress as well, the stress of a long day, of dying light and hope as they made their way home. Her shadow extended its hand out to his. He took it. And they walked together in the dusk, casting but one shadow, not caring if night fell before they reached home. They would have each other.

Right now, he didn't have her. Again, he was walking alone. Again, the night scared him.

"Commander, we've found her shuttle. One human life sign onboard. She's alive."

He stifled a sigh of relief.

"Beam her to Sickbay."

Occasionally, she would trip and fall, wander away. He always found her again, always stayed by her as she regained her former grace. He didn't like to think of never being able to find her again. They would always find each other. In this world or the next, he would find her.

He couldn't walk alone in the eternal dusk. Not for too long...

He prayed that she would never wander away again.

It was a prayer that his spirits or the God she no longer believed in couldn't answer.

* * *

Just finished my paper! Guh...damn virtue ethicist's point of view on media ethics. Nafsika Athanassoulis is not an easy read and she's damn preachy. This might be a ficlet series. For now, think of this as all you're getting. I'm not sure yet.


	2. See You Tomorrow

**Disclaimer: **ST: VOY isn't mine.

**Author's Note: **I've decided to continue this series whenever I feel like it. Something loose I can tweak when I please. Quotes come from whatever I happen to be reading at the time. This is taken from Jose Saramago's Seeing, a political allegory that alludes to Portugal. I thought my nose would bleed while reading it and every chapter was a headache. Still, it was a fulfilling read and it gave me the quote to start this ficlet off. I also want to make sure each ficlet can stand on its own, by the way.

**Shadows at Dusk**

**by mistress amethyst une**

_It's odd how we spend every day of our life saying goodbye, saying and hearing others say see you tomorrow when, inevitably, on one of those days, which will be someone's last, either the person we said it to will no longer be here, or we who said it will not. _--taken from _Seeing_ by Jose Saramago

He saw her on that biobed, her body battered and bleeding as the doctor hovered over her with a dermal regenerator. The doctor told him that all her injuries were superficial, that she'd been lucky.

"One of these days her luck's going to run out," sighed the doctor as a bruise was erased from her sleeping face. The regenerator ran over her split lip, restoring the mouth she would undoubtedly use to chew out her first officer when she awoke.

"I could have handled myself," she would argue without thinking of how grave the circumstances she'd been in were.

He would glare at her, showing her that she was going about this like a child, a child who just wanted to be right.

"The shuttle was on autopilot, and I'd already plotted the course. I would have made it to the rendezvous point," she would add, not wanting to back down. "I would have made it. There was no need to send the ship out searching for me just because I was a few hours late..."

Her pride would be wounded. Of late, she hadn't been on any away missions, not since the last time she was abducted and he'd had to bear witness to the dreadful affair that was the umpteenth attempt to raise her from the dead. He would want to tell her that had they not gone searching for her after those few hours, those hours would inevitably have stretched out into days, maybe even weeks. Instead he would content himself by blurting without thinking.

"Would you have been alive when you reached the rendezvous point?" he would ask her, challenging her with apparent anger in his eyes.

He would walk out, wishing the door was the sort one could slam. But no, he would exit with a hiss instead of a bang as the doors mechanically slid shut behind him, a sheet of metal on a track whispering against the door frame. She would stew in silence, angry at him, angry at herself, never tearing her angry gaze from the door he'd just exited through, wishing its edge had been razor sharp and that it had shut just a second before he could get through so it could slice him neatly in half.

He saw all the events clearly. He hated what he saw. But then, he had the tendency to exaggerate. He was painting the worst case scenario, the end of his relationship with Kathryn. She was surely more mature than what he'd just seen in his mind's eye. Still, one had to be prepared. Then again, the scenarios he ran in his head were never what actually happened.

He thought back to just before she'd left on that damned mission.

"See you tomorrow," she'd told him in the shuttle bay.

It was a simple diplomatic mission. True, he'd had his reservations when the planet's inhabitants had told him that she would have to go alone but he's put those aside for her sake. She'd had so much zeal concerning this particular mission. It had been so long since she'd been out on a shuttle, not since...he didn't want to think about it right before her departure.

"Twenty-four hours," he'd replied.

"No more and no less," she'd smiled, giving him a wink before boarding the shuttle.

Tomorrow. Twenty-four hours in terms of a day on Earth. But in the Delta Quadrant...when exactly was tomorrow? Space didn't spin on an axis, didn't follow an orbit, didn't revolve around anything. Tomorrow was a myth. One could say that their seven years in the Delta Quadrant was one never-ending day, one where billions of suns surrounded them, setting and rising for the worlds they ruled but never for Voyager. The dimming and amplification of light onboard every twelve hours couldn't compare to a true night and day. He yearned for a true 'tomorrow,' one with a sun that rose and set, one where he would be back home, back home with her...

Space is utter emptiness, the vastness in which all existence floats. It is under the control of nothing at all and it also controls nothing at all. It's just there, a place that exists solely so everything else can exist. It must be sad. One would prefer to be a star or a planet. A star's gravitational pull naturally draws things to it, makes things revolve around it, gives light and sustains the potential for life for whatever is drawn to it. A planet is a slave to its star, revolving around it, spinning on its axis so the star can shed light on the planet's entire surface, so that the star can know the planet's face. The star gives the planet its orbit, its home, a gravitational circle it travels as if to embrace the star as the star reciprocates the planet's adoration by kissing it with light.

She used to be like space, existing only so they could get home, so they wouldn't cease to exist in this perilous quadrant. But then she became his star and everything changed.

It's sad to be a planet, too. A planet can do nothing for one's star. If the star's life ends, the planet dies with it. Plain and simple. There is an eternal distance between a planet and a star. They are drawn together, unable to keep away from each other. Still, there is a distance set in place. A planet cannot get too close; it will die, be scorched. Stars are dangerous things, temperamental and prone to flaring up. A planet easily ceases to exist by getting too close. The perfect tragic love story.

* * *

All right, so there we go. Another ficlet to add to the set.


	3. That Feeling

**Disclaimer: **ST: VOY isn't mine.

**Author's Note:** "The Thirteenth Egg" is a lovely post-war superhero story from the short story anthology "Who Can Save Us Now?" edited by Owen King and John McNally. The line quoted below struck me because we've all felt that way at some point or another. Certainly, that's how I feel. I'm really looking forward to finishing the stories I started. I just hope I'm up to it when the time comes. For now, I really don't have the strength yet but I write when I can.

**Shadows at Dusk**

**by mistress amethyst une**

_If he could just wait it out, though, if he could hold on for a while, he'd eventually go back to being who he used to be. Someone solid and stable. He just had to be patient _--taken from _The Thirteenth Egg_ by Scott Snyder

To call him broken would be an insult to the breakfast tray he'd just dropped on Neelix's otherwise immaculate mess hall floor.

Kneeling down to pick up the pieces of what would have been the first meal he'd had in two days, he couldn't help but sigh in frustration. Neelix had decided to use the "special china" today, to help raise the crew's spirits. It was beyond Chakotay how fancy earthenware plates, from a particularly hostile race who hadn't given them the time of day until Voyager had saved them from a Kazon armada, were going to make anybody any happier. Certainly, they only worsened his mood by shattering upon impact when he dropped his tray.

He was careful to pick up the pieces, stacking the broken shards neatly on the plastic tray, leaving it on a nearby table before storming out. No one dared approach him. They all knew he was on edge. Even Neelix, for all his usual ability to try to spirit away a bad mood until the afflicted individual was cured or yelled at him, backed off. Chakotay was never more dangerous than when he was exhausted, worried and frustrated by their captain.

She was going to wake up soon. She had to. He was sick of waiting. Would every day be like this if she never opened her eyes again? Would this be what he would be like as captain? Always pissed off at the world for no particular reason?

He smirked. There was a damned reason and she was in sickbay refusing to wake up so he could have some semblance of peace back.

He hadn't lied in the least when he'd told her he'd found the meaning of peace through her. Had she forgotten? Even when she was acting like a hurricane, even when she was as close to peaceful as a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy over a drop of blood in the water, even then she was his peace. When she caused chaos, it simply meant she was alive. When she was quiet, when she didn't move...

He needed to collapse into bed. Preferably with her but that wasn't exactly a possibility now, was it? He reached his quarters, buried himself under the covers and growled his frustration into his pillow.

"Damn you, Kathryn. Wake up before I do or there'll be hell to pay."

Perhaps she heard him. Most probably, she didn't. Maybe the universe simply likes to play games. Regardless, she opened her eyes and found herself being attended to by a relieved doctor a few minutes after her first officer dozed off following his threat to no one in particular.

"What happened to me?" she asked, dreading the answer.

The doctor sighed, "Do you want the long or the short version of events?"

"Short. Knowing Chakotay, I'm going to be hearing the long version soon enough. Is it too soon for coffee?"

* * *

There we go. I already have the quote for the next one. Hoping I can churn it out soon.


	4. Almost Impossible

**Disclaimer: **ST: VOY isn't mine.

**Author's Note:** Writing a toughie paper. (sighs)

**Shadows at Dusk**

**by mistress amethyst une**

_People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer. _--taken from _The Graveyard Book_ by Neil Gaiman

Sometimes he wondered what made him like the fact that he couldn't stop thinking about her.

Maybe it was because thinking of her reassured him that she was real, that she wasn't a dream or a figment of his imagination. It reminded him that the impossible woman he wooed and worked with wasn't really impossible. Then again, it also reminded him how utterly vulnerable she was. Being real meant being suceptible to things like pain and death.

He stared at the almost impossibility of a woman he never wanted torn from his heart, making sure she saw more of his discontent at another close call and less of his relief that it had just been a close call and nothing more.

To her credit, she wasn't glaring. Her expression was almost apologetic, maybe even deeply sorry. He figured that he currently had the constitution of an ice cube hastily dunked in hot water. He felt himself begin to crack as he melted under her gaze. He needed to be composed, damn it!

He failed to understand how the universe could create a creature so utterly capable yet so completely vulnerable. If he'd never met her, he wouldn't have believed someone like her could exist. Heck, if he hadn't fallen in love with her, he'd most probably spend every day wishing he could forget her.

Sometimes, he still did.

He wanted to forget just how beautiful she could be even when she was at death's door.

She was never going to die.

That was simply impossible, wasn't it?

She was going to outlive him. He had always been sure of that, had never really prepared for an occassion that would call for-

Preparing for something is acknowledging that it is going to happen. That's why humans always prepare for disaster. They're all utterly convinced that their species attracts trouble wherever it goes. Actually, it's life that seduces trouble into making a special appearance. Where there is life, there are unfortunate events. That's simply the way things are.

She was alive and she was going to die someday.

He dropped his facade and silently took her batterred body in his arms. A tear silently ran down his cheek. She smiled into his shoulder.

Maybe she wasn't in trouble after all...

* * *

Back to the dull paper about needle-free injections...


End file.
